London: Indian generic drug companies will be the "first to be called" to collaborate with a $150 million joint venture between the US pharmaceutical giant Merck and British medical charity Wellcome Trust to develop and produce new vaccines in India.
The new company, MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, will have 60 staff who will develop cheap vaccines for neglected diseases that are common in developing countries, CEO Altaf A Lal said.
These vaccines - new as well as improved versions of existing ones - will be marketed around the world. Importantly, the company will develop vaccines that do not need to be refrigerated.
"Indian pharmaceutical companies will be in the centre stage. In Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune� wherever they are they will be the first to be called," said Lal, former chief of the molecular vaccine section in the US National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Wellcome Trust Director Mark Wolpert said the new company will benefit from the "capability of generic companies to produce hundreds of millions of doses".
"To be able to have low cost capability is important. I see collaboration all the way," he said.
India is among a handful of countries that have advanced vaccine production capability.
Lal said: "There's tremendous capacity in India: we are fortunate to have so many choices, and doubly fortunate to be working on diseases that they (Indian companies) may not be targeting and which may not be in their pipeline. So I only see win-win on both sides."
"The aim is global. In India for the developing world as a whole, and that's where academia comes in as well," Lal told IANS Thursday at the London offices of Wellcome Trust, one of the biggest medical charities in the world.
Lal, who was born in Jammu and Kashmir and educated in Lucknow, said India had "great scientific expertise, political leadership, as well as health challenges."
"I have served with institutions in India, and I know the many challenges that country and that region face. Too many children in India and other developing countries die from infectious diseases, even children under five. So we have much work to do to develop vaccines that these children need so that they are safe."
"Once we have decided on a set of priorities, we will involve Indian companies from the very beginning," Lal said.
The first vaccine the group will focus on will be against Group A Streptococci, which affects 18 million people around the world - 86 percent of them in developing countries - and causes half a million deaths every year worldwide, said Merck CEO Richard T Clark.
David Haymann, Chairman of the UK Health Protection Agency who will chair the Hilleman advisory group, said the company will tap into "the great skills from Indian researchers and academics, and quite an established vaccine industry, which together can provide for the needs of developing countries".
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